JREF Swift Blog

Here is a rundown of the top stories about anomalies, pseudoscience, paranormal and the mysterious from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.

Whoa. It was a busy week. The media did a good bit of mystery mongering this week.

These strange red lights were seen in a Washington neighborhood and published in the local paper. Interesting that they correspond exactly to a hoax smart phone app. But the paper concludes it's military exercises.

A Buffalo area newspaper reports on ice holes that appeared in a private pond. And, they make a big deal about it when it's really not a big deal. I try to tell people that but they would rather it remain mysterious. Such is the life of skeptics.

A strange white animal crawls out of the woods and dies under a porch in Maine. One biologist retrieves the carcass and makes a curious discovery.

Irony alert of the week: People who have never found Bigfoot produce a book calling Finding Bigfoot.

In the past few weeks there has been a dust-up about the quality of TED speakers. TED is a platform for ideas where speakers have their 15 minute talks recorded and placed on the web. Local TED events may be endorsed by the TED brand but the West Hollywood event lost its TED affiliation due to the very non-scientific topics presented at the event.

Speaking of psuedoscience, what do archaeologists do when faced with "bad archaeology"? Should they ignored it as they have typically done or should they speak out?

Because of Holy Week, the Shroud of Turin was on display in more ways than one this past week. Publicity was heaped upon it due to a new book that once again flies in the face of the scientific consensus and purports to say the shroud was of the age of Jesus.